dead. Cardinal felt the contradictory sensations of being both hollowed out and yet extremely heavy – as if his heart had been replaced by a ball of lead. Catherine breathed this frosty air too.
‘When do you have to be back in New York?’ he asked Kelly.
‘Well, I told them I was gonna take two weeks.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to stay that long, you know. I’m sure you need to get back.’
‘It’s fine, Dad. I want to stay.’
‘How about today? You have any plans?’
‘I was thinking about calling Kim Delaney, but I don’t know. You remember Kim?’
Cardinal recalled a big strapping blonde girl – angry at the world and very political. She and Kelly had been inseparable in their last years of high school.
‘I would have thought Kim would have ventured out into the big bad world by now.’
‘Yeah, so would I.’
‘You sound mournful.’ Cardinal accidentally brushed against a recycling bin. A Jack Russell bounced up and down on the other side of the fence, yapping elaborate canine threats.
‘Well, we were best friends for a while, but now I’m not even sure if I should call her,’ Kelly said. ‘Kim was the smartest girl at Algonquin High – way smarter than me – head of the debating club, delegate at the junior UN, editor of the yearbook. And now it’s like she wants to be Queen of Suburbia.’
‘Not everyone wants to move to New York.’
‘I know that. But Kim’s twenty-seven and she’s already got three kids, and she owns two – two! – SUVs.’
Cardinal pointed at a driveway they were just passing: one Grand Cherokee, one Wagoneer.
‘All she can talk about is sports. Honestly, I think Kim’s life revolves around curling and hockey and ringette. I’m surprised she isn’t into bowling yet.’
‘Priorities change when you have kids.’
‘Well, I never want kids if it means you have to check your mind at the door. Kim hasn’t read a newspaper in years. All she watches on TV is Survivor and Canadian Idol and hockey. Hockey! She hated sports when we were in school. Honestly, I thought Kim and I would be friends forever, but now I’m thinking maybe I won’t call.’
‘Well, here’s an idea. You feel like making a quick trip down to Toronto?’
Kelly looked over at him. There was a fine film of sweat on her upper lip and her cheeks were flushed. ‘You’re going to Toronto? What brought this on?’
‘Something cooking at the Forensic Centre. I want to deal with it in person.’
‘This is to do with Mom?’
‘Yeah.’
For a few moments there was just the sound of their breathing – Cardinal’s breathing, anyway. Kelly didn’t seem to be having any trouble. Water Road ended in a turning circle. The two of them slowed and ran in place for a few moments. Beyond the red-brick bungalows, with their neat lawns and rows of stout yard-waste bags, the lake was deep indigo.
‘Dad,’ Kelly said, ‘Mom killed herself. She killed herself and it hurts like hell, but the truth is she was manic depressive, she was in and out of hospitals for a long time, and it’s really, ultimately, not so surprising that she wanted out.’ She touched his arm. ‘You know it wasn’t about you.’
‘Are you gonna come?’
‘Boy, you don’t mess around when you set your mind on something, do you?’ She gave it a second. ‘All right, I’ll come. But just to keep you company on the drive.’
Cardinal pointed to a path that looped away through the trees. ‘Let’s go back the scenic way.’
All the way south down Highway 11, Cardinal could not think of anything but Catherine. Although think was not the word. He felt her absence in the beauty of the hills. He felt her hovering above the highway; it had always been the road that took Cardinal away from or back to Catherine. But she had not been there this time to wave goodbye, would not be there when he came back.
Kelly fiddled with the radio dial.
‘Hey, put it back,’ Cardinal said. ‘That was the Beatles!’
‘Ugh. I can’t stand the Beatles.’
‘How can anyone hate the Beatles? That’s like hating sunshine. It’s like hating ice cream.’
‘It’s just their early stuff I can’t stand. They sound like little wind-up toys.’
Cardinal glanced over at her. Twenty-seven. His daughter was older now than Catherine had been when Kelly was born. Cardinal asked her about New York.
For the next little while Kelly told him about her latest frustrations in trying to make it as an artist. New York was a hard town to be broke in. She had to share an apartment with three other women, and they didn’t always get along. And she was obliged to work at two jobs to make ends meet: she was assisting a painter named Klaus Meier – stretching canvases for him, doing his books – and also working as a waitress three days a week. It didn’t leave a lot of time for her own painting.
‘And doing all this, you never feel the pull of suburban life? The yearning for a small town?’
‘Never. I miss Canada sometimes, though. It’s kind of hard to be friends with Americans.’
‘How’s that?’
‘Americans are the friendliest people in the world, on the surface. At first I found it almost intoxicating – they’re so much more outgoing than Canadians. And they’re not afraid to have a good time.’
‘That’s true. Canadians are more reserved.’
I’m acting, Cardinal thought. I’m not having a conversation, I’m acting like a man having a conversation. This is how it’s done: you listen, you nod, you ask a question. But I’m not here. I’m as gone as the World Trade Center. My heart is Ground Zero. He wanted to talk to Catherine about this, but Catherine was not there.
He struggled to focus.
‘Somewhere along the line Americans invented a kind of fake intimacy,’ Kelly said. ‘They’ll tell you about their divorce the first time they meet you, or their history of child abuse. I’m not kidding. I had one guy tell me how his father used to “incest” him, as he put it. That was on the first date. In the beginning I thought everyone was really trusting, but they’re not at all. They just don’t have any sense of decorum. Why are you smiling?’
‘It’s just funny, hearing you talk about decorum. Unconventional girl like you.’
‘I’m actually pretty conventional, when you get down to it. I have a feeling it’s going to be my downfall as an artist. God, look at the trees.’
The
